


the descent into love (and revenge)

by delicates



Category: Original Work
Genre: Blood and Violence, Character Death, Elves, F/F, F/M, Ghosts, Lycans, Mental Health Issues, Private Investigators, Revenants, Supernatural Elements, Supernatural Hunters, Unhealthy Coping Mechanisms
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-12-04
Updated: 2020-12-04
Packaged: 2021-02-28 19:28:44
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,311
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23192437
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/delicates/pseuds/delicates
Summary: Elora Valerez finds herself in this peculiar, unfortunate situation. What she once thought was a lost cause, a sad death riddled with faults, is soon discovered to be nobody's fault at all. Except for the secret organization that killed her dead boyfriend and might also be trying to kill her, very alive, new fling. But when her dead boyfriend comes back as a ghost, will she choose to love life, or to dance with death? And just how many fucking hunters does she have to kill for this secret organization to fall apart?
Relationships: Original Female Character/Original Female Character, Original Female Character/Original Male Character
Comments: 2
Kudos: 10





	the descent into love (and revenge)

**Author's Note:**

> dedicated to sasha.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> dedicated to lexi.

“What a fucking idiot.”

  
The lights strewn across the walls painted them in a red glow as they ventured further down the grimy yet crowded hallway, shoving their way past the intoxicated and drugged out people that loitered. There were shouts of complaints and petty threats were made but the group of friends stood their ground and continued down the hall until the space opened up. The girl at the front of the group shoved a junkie backwards, baring her pointed fangs at them in warning before pushing forward.

“Literally, what a fucking idiot,” she snarls. “to come here _knowing_ it’s illegal for his kind to get involved in this kind of shit.”

  
It was way past curfew for the three teenagers, the time being something past 3 A.M. in what’s supposed to be a sleeping city. However, they had thrown caution to the wind in search of their young friend who had somehow snuck off of campus grounds to head to Ruby District, a disreputable and dodgy area of the city that was definitely avoided more than it was visited. It was a wonder that their friend had managed to make it this far without any form of identification since it was a good distance from the dorms— not that you’d need it in this district. Money could give you the world if you had enough of it.

  
Ruby District, home to all creatures of the night willing to go far enough for a bit of pleasure. They housed the revenants, lycans, both the succubi and incubi, and any other creatures that spent more time feeding into their dark desires than holding back. Most of the activities and services here were highly illegal if you went to the right place, making for a dangerous situation regarding their friend Stryx.

  
So that’s how they found themselves in the infamous club _Bloodfire_ , an illegal feeding ground for revenants. The club overwhelmed them with the stench of rust and sweat as they pushed through the crowd aimlessly in search of Stryx. Elora was going to leave him out the next time the sun rose, that’s for sure.

  
Alanis follows closely behind her and complains, “Hell, where could that boy be? I can’t even pick up a scent!”

  
The tips of Elora’s hair shift slightly from the breeze of Alanis’ breath, and she reluctantly finds herself agreeing with the teenage lycan. Even those with heightened senses would have a hard time deciphering one scent out of dozens— especially in this cesspool.

  
“Well,” Elora responds, agitation creeping into the edges of her voice, “He said he was here.”

  
And he did. He called Elora himself.

  
The dark elf herself wishes she was still curled up in the warmth of her blankets right now, sleeping until her alarm rang for class. However, after calling a confused Gerald at two-thirty something in the morning with panic as clear as day in her voice, Elora hauled two of her closest friends out past curfew into the darkest of nights. There was no moon tonight which meant Revenants struggled with their internal instincts, threatening to break from the confinement they so graciously put themselves in for the safety of others. Stryx was still considered a fledgling at fifty years old— and fledglings were not exactly known for self control. _That_ was why Elora wasted no time in shuttling over to Ruby District.

  
“Maybe we should try calling him again,” Gerald speaks up from the back, his soft spoken words somehow traveling over the loudness of the club clearly. This was the first time he’s spoken tonight. “He might pick up.”

  
Elora hesitates. It wasn’t a _terrible_ idea.

  
She pulls her phone from her back pocket and dials Stryx’s number on the screen, her free hand dragging Alanis with her— who grabs onto Gerald— and moves them over to a secluded corner of the club. The phone rings for maybe fifteen seconds before Elora hears the relieving sound of the phone being picked up. There’s only heavy breathing on the other side of the line until the horribly broken voice of Stryx pours through the speaker, any anger she previously felt dissipating.

“Elora?”

  
Her chest tightens at the sound of his voice. “Stryx?”

  
“Elora,” he shudders, “I might have messed up.”

  
“Where are you?”

  
“Hiding in the bathroom.”

  
Elora mouths his location to Alanis and Gerald who sigh in relief. Their relief is cut short when they notice the concern still plastered on her face. They can’t hear how utterly lost Stryx sounds right now.

  
“Where is it?” she finally asks after a moment of silence. “We’re gonna come get you.”

  
He directs them to the bathroom he’s secluded himself in and begs them to hurry before hanging up. Elora nudges past two men standing outside of the door, ignoring the complaints they make and goes to push open the door, only to find that it’s locked. She turns around to look at her friends, throwing her hands up in exasperation.

  
“It’s locked,” she tells them.

  
“I can kick it open?” Alanis proposes, being the only one out of the three that had enhanced strength. She could easily break down the door. Elora considers this but doesn’t want to attract too much attention. The two men behind the group of friends were growing agitated with them and the last thing the teenagers needed was to start a fight when they weren’t even supposed to be here.

  
“Or you can ask Stryx to unlock it.”

  
The two girls turn their heads to look at Gerald, who had been the only one to offer up a sound piece of advice.

  
Elora pulls her phone from her pocket and tries calling Stryx, frowning when she’s immediately sent to his voicemail. “ _Hey there! It’s Stryx. Leave a message and I’ll get back to you later_.”

  
She sighs and pinches the bridge of her nose, trying to gather her thoughts and not panic. “His phone must have died,” then turning to her Lycan friend, she says, “Do it.”

  
Gerald pulls Elora behind him when Alanis steps up to the door, raising her leg and then slamming her foot into the door.

  
There’s an ear splitting crack that sounds off the walls even over the loud music. The door slams open and into the wall, the hinges creaking as if the door was threatening to come off of them, before shutting again. Elora quickly moves past Gerald and Alanis, tearing her way into the bathroom, shielding her eyes when she’s greeted with fluorescent lights, leaving Alanis and Gerald to stand outside. She raises her voice to tell her two friends to hang back and to keep anyone from entering.

They wouldn’t know how to deal with this. Then again, _Elora_ isn’t sure if she’ll know how to deal with this. She checks underneath each stall until his familiar, worn red sneakers are peeking out. Only, something is wrong.

  
The light in here doesn’t bathe them in that irritating red glow like it did before. No, these lights were a bright white, allowing anyone to clearly see the scene laid out before them. Elora’s eyes widen at the splatters of blood pooling in little circles around Stryx’s sneakers. She stands back up. The hems of his jeans are soaked in the substance too and she’s almost afraid to open the stall door and face the rest.  
  
Nonetheless she asks, “Can you open the door?”

  
It’s a lot quieter in the bathroom, and she speaks with hesitance in her voice. She isn’t sure she wants to see the rest of him but braces herself when the stall door creaks open. Elora meets the frightened green eyes of her best friend and allows herself to go over his appearance just one time before he launches himself at her and wraps his arms around her torso, sobbing into the crook of her neck.

  
Stunned, Elora just stands there; even feels something cold seep through her jacket. With a shaky hand she reaches up to run her fingers through his hair soothingly, murmuring reassurances she wasn’t sure she herself believes. As her best friend cries, she’s reminded that while Stryx had lived well over fifty years, he still had the mindset of an eighteen year old. Frozen forever at an age where he hasn’t reached full maturity.

  
Alanis and Gerald filter in after a couple of minutes and Elora pulls back to assess Stryx’s appearance more closely. Her breath hitches in her throat. 

Stryx’s arms are covered in a deep, crimson color up to his elbows and so are his clothes— the blood smeared across the chest of his shirt as if someone had tried to fight him off. His usually tamed, blonde hair is disheveled and the ends of his hair are crusted over with more blood. Alanis stumbles over her footing and words when she approaches them. “Uh, I...” is all she says before Gerald appears and places his hand on her shoulder, holding out a damp paper towel he had taken from the sink area on his way in. His eyes tell Elora everything she needs to know. He was alarmed.

  
The mood in the room was borderline volatile, everyone too afraid to speak. No, too afraid to be confronted with the reality of their situation. What the hell had Stryx done?

  
Elora is the first one to move, taking the damp paper towel from Geralds’ hand and turning to face Stryx. She tries to hold back the shudder that travels through her body and reaches for Stryx’s bloodied hands, beginning to wipe his skin clean. Her voice fails her when she tries to speak. Stryx takes notice of this and shrinks in on himself. Elora can feel her heart crack a little bit.

  
Alanis has found her voice though, coming up next to him to help assist in cleaning him up. “Can’t have you going out there looking like this.” she murmurs.

  
Stryx looks down at the area she’s wiping. “I guess you’re right.”

  
Once Alanis and Elora are finished with wiping his skin clean, Gerald offers Stryx his jacket to cover up the bloody smear across the chest. Stryx zips it up with trembling hands. Elora guides him to the sink.

  
“Don’t look in the mirror,” she says gently, pressing the palm of her hand into his lower back and trailing her fingers up and down his spine. “Let’s get your hair rinsed. Then we’ll go home.”

  
By some miracle, they make it out of the club alive.

— ✧ —

The shuttle is void of people by the time they leave Ruby District, save for the few drunk stragglers that stumble onto the train cart by accident and the two men sitting in the very back. Still, the four teenagers don’t relax. Getting out of the district was the easy part; it was getting back into East Emerald that was going to prove difficult. A fortified wall about two hundred feet high that housed faculty and students was their problem. Due to the fact that it was a school district, getting in and out past curfew meant you had a hell of a lot of strings to pull.

  
Elora did, of course. But only just this once.

  
She glances over at her friends. Alanis has fallen asleep with her head resting awkwardly on her shoulder but judging by the clenched fist, she isn’t really asleep. Gerald is casually scrolling through his phone and Stryx… Stryx stares blankly at his feet.

  
Prying has never exactly been Elora’s thing. She absolutely loathes when people try to pick her brain apart and usually there was no way she’d try to do the same to someone else but he was covered in so much blood. Her stomach twists as she nudges his arm with hers. He looks up at her with those same blank eyes.

  
“So,” Elora quietly says, all too aware of the ears that could possibly hear them. “Are you ready to talk about what happened?”

  
Stryx tenses beside her, shifting in his seat to submerge his hands deep into the jacket pockets. He refuses to meet her gaze. “I don’t exactly remember what happened.”

  
“Try to.”

  
Stryx shuts his eyes briefly before meeting Elora’s pressing stare. “I… I came to _Bloodfire_ to handle something. I met this girl while I was there and she said she could help me…” he trails off.

  
Elora is inquisitive now. “Help with what?”

  
“That doesn’t matter,” Stryx hastily replies. “What matters is that she led me to a back room and…and I lost it. I lost control of myself.”

  
“There’s so much blood.”

  
“She fought back.”

  
Elora glances around the train to make sure no one heard them, freezing when she briefly makes eye contact with one of the other passengers. They divert their gaze almost immediately, opting to look out at the endless tunnel walls.

  
“Is she alive?” she whispers frantically this time. The men in the back converse quietly and Elora can’t help but glance back at them again.

  
“What?” Stryx looks bewildered.

  
“ _Is she alive_?” Elora hisses.

  
“I panicked and left her there!”

  
“But you don’t know if she’s _alive_?”

  
“N-No, I guess not.”

  
The shuttle comes to a halt outside of the station, the brakes squealing loudly throughout the quiet night. Alanis jolts awake and mutters to herself while Gerald puts his phone away. Neither of them noticed the building tension in Elora as she impatiently waited for the shuttle to open its doors. The only one who notices is Stryx, who stares at her with questions swimming behind the glistening tears in his eyes. Elora wastes no time in pulling him upright when the door slides open with a mechanical groan, dragging him into the brisk air of the station. Now they were in the transitioning district, one of many that connected major districts to one another. It was one of the only places to constantly be bustling in traffic. Their other two friends follow behind almost nonchalantly— they’re just glad the trouble was almost over.

  
They don’t make it very far before Elora feels Stryx being roughly pulled from her grip, the force sending her stumbling backwards. When she lands on the ground she curses, scraping the palms of her hands against the uneven concrete as she breaks her fall. By the time she looks back up, Stryx is struggling against their assailant, choking from the lack of air.

  
Elora pushes herself up to her feet, lunging at the man who wraps an arm around her friends’ throat. The three collide with the concrete clumsily and the dark elf inhales sharply when she scrapes herself some more, her blood painting her elbows a deep, violet color.

  
“Elora!”

  
Alanis begins towards Elora only to be stopped by a tall man donning black clothing. He reaches into his jacket pocket and Elora only sees the glint of metal briefly before her friend is being hit over the head. There’s a sickening crunch and her body drops to the ground with a heavy thud. Gerald stands beside her body, rooted in place as he stares down at Alanis with an expression Elora can’t place— but she knows he’s scared.

  
This isn’t making sense. _This doesn’t make sense._

  
This is the thought that replays over and over again in Elora’s mind as she stands, helping Stryx up to his feet as she does so. The man she tackled groans from his position on the ground and when he turns to look at them she’s hit with the horrifying realization that she’s seen these men before.

  
“The train,” she whispers. “They were on the train with us.”

  
Through the chaos that ensues and amidst the sudden rage that courses through her veins, what Elora really feels is confusion. The cold that settles over her body feels like the bitter chill of the wind, seeping into her bones. She’s frozen in place just like Gerald is, unable to move her feet as the man climbs to his. She doesn’t understand what’s happening.

  
Elora wants to do what the bystanders are doing. They’re running away, scattering in fear at the sight of Alanis’ crumpled body. She’s terrified of the outcome of this experience. These men were no ordinary men. No, they were _hunters_. She could tell by the way they carried themselves and handled the situation.

  
“Stop!” Elora shouts at the man who grabs Stryx by the hair, dragging him down until the teenager is down on his knees before him. Panic rises in her chest and her throat tightens up. What does she do? _What does she do?_ Her mind races as she tries to figure out a way to prevent what’s about to happen. For a moment everything is quiet, the only sound she can hear being the blood rushing in her ears. The men stop and stare at her curiously, eyes locked on Elora. Finally she takes a breath and says, “He didn’t kill anyone.”

  
Everything stops. Elora isn’t sure if she’s even still breathing. There is no way to describe the terror that fills her, how helpless she feels against these horrible men. She fixes the man with a pleading gaze. “He didn’t kill anyone. Please.” _Please. Please let him go._

  
The two men glance at each other before the one restraining Stryx lets him go. Relief rushes over Elora, and she goes to move towards her best friend.

  
_Bang!_

  
One moment, Elora is only a few feet away from Stryx. The next moment she finds herself on the ground, staring into the polluted night sky. Her vision blurs around the corners of her eyes, tears suddenly falling down the sides of her face. It feels like someone set her body on fire, the pain surging through her veins as she coughs up something warm and wet.

  
It’s blood, she realizes.

  
Elora writhes on the ground, her limbs twitching as she tries to find the source of the pain. It’s everywhere. She can’t keep the scream that bubbles in her throat down, the sound tearing through the night. Blinding white hot pain is all she feels now— the kind that makes you see spots in your eyes. It’s so hot. _It’s so hot_. She wants it to stop. _Make it stop. PLEASE MAKE IT STOP._

  
Somewhere through the pain, Elora registers she’s been shot. Her abdomen screams at her with each twitch and she lifts a clumsy hand, swiping it across her bloodied jacket until she presses into the wrong place.

  
This time she does black out, the world going dark and drowning out the sound around her. All there is is the crashing waves of fiery pain to keep her company until that too, subsides.

— ✧ —

When Elora awakens, it’s to someone kneeling directly over her body. In the midst of her confusion, she notices too late when a pair of hands presses down onto her abdomen, the pain flaring up where they touch. She bites down a scream. Then it’s gone. It takes a few minutes before Elora can see through her tears, looking around until she meets the eyes of a panicking Gerald, who kneels above her with bloodied hands. He’s crying, she notices.

  
“Alanis?” she whispers, fear seeping into the edges of her voice.

“She’s fine,” he replies quickly but his voice is unsteady and he tears a strip of fabric from his shirt, which he carefully bundles up and presses to Elora’s wound. “Just knocked out.”

  
“Stryx?”

  
There’s no response and for the second time this night his eyes tell everything. Elora shoves her friend away, crying out as she rolls over onto her side. The crowds have long dispersed and Elora wonders how long she was unconscious. All there is to see is Stryx on his knees— staring into the barrel of a loaded gun.

  
The man pulls the trigger.

  
Stryx is dead.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> twitter: @genuinebrat
> 
> hello! this is a rewritten prologue for the most part. i hope you enjoyed it! chapter one should be up soon.

**Author's Note:**

> twitter: @genuinebrat


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